Dr Will Butler
About
Dr Will Butler is Head of Military Records at The National Archives, UK. Previously, he worked as Associate Lecturer and Outreach Officer for the School of History, and as the Subject Specialist for the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Kent. He sits on the Council of the Army Records Society and is a Managing Editor of the British Journal for Military History.
His research focusses on the history of the British Army during the 19th and 20th centuries, the Irish amateur military tradition, and the use of propaganda during the First World War and its aftermath.
His first monograph, The Irish Amateur Military Tradition in the British Army, 1854-1992, was publish by Manchester University Press in 2016, and he has also published on the formation of the Ulster Home Guard in Northern Ireland during the Second World War, and on the British Army demobilisation strikes at the end of the First World War. His co-authored book (with Timothy Bowman and Michael Wheatley), The Disparity of Sacrifice; Irish Recruitment to the British Armed Forces, 1914-1918 was published by Liverpool University Press in 2020.
Will is currently working on a study of the post-First World War British Army, including an analysis of its role in Upper Silesia in the early 1920s.